In Wisconsin, the Left Picked a Fight—and Lost– It’s important to remember, as Democrats cope with their failure to topple Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Tuesday’s recall, that this was a fight they chose.Unlike the vast majority of elections, which occur on a regular schedule, the recall was a fight the left picked on purpose. They picked it because they thought they could win. And they were wrong.It wasn’t even close. In the final tally, Walker led his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by 53 percent to 46 percent.

The idea behind the recall effort was to send a message: a warning to conservatives across the country that there was a line not to be crossed when it came to messing with the hard-earned gains of public worker unions. By losing, however, the consortium of unions, progressives and Democrats that worked so ardently to send Walker packing may have sent the opposite message. If Walker can survive, what’s to stop any other right-leaning governor from pushing the envelope?

“This really is a test case. The far right made Wisconsin its petri dish,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action Wisconsin, a grassroots progressive group that supported the recall effort. Walker’s win, he said, will embolden the Koch brothers and other national conservative funders to get ideologically sympathetic Republicans to push their agenda across the country.

Wisconsin recall: The biggest losers– Vince Lombardi, the man who taught Cheeseheads to think with clarity about the severe consequences of victory and defeat, once offered this gem about life: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”Scott Walker last night showed Wisconsin and the country a bunch of pretty good losers in his recall election triumph. In the spirit of tell-it-like-it-is St. Vince, POLITICO offers up a guide to the top five: Democrats, President Barack Obama, public unions, conservative critics and money monks.Here’s why:

“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”

Well, politics is all about keeping score — and Democrats suffered a good old-fashioned beatdown. They invested seven months of effort, tens of millions of dollars, exhausted volunteers to collect nearly 1 million signatures. Then, they litigated an extremely divisive primary and spent millions more — all to get back to exactly where they were when they started: with Walker on top.

There’s no other way to slice it: this was a crippling blow to a party in Wisconsin that not long ago controlled both U.S. Senate seats and the governor’s mansion. Sure, Walker spent gobs of money in unique circumstances to pull it out. But the psychological blow is impossible to ignore and will certainly echo in the state’s first open U.S. Senate race in 24 years.

Why Scott Walker won the Wisconsin recall– Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) escaped a recall effort championed by organized labor and touted by many within both parties as a preview of the fall presidential campaign in the Badger State.How much — or little — Walker’s victory tells us about the state of play heading into the fall election remains an open question that won’t be easily answerable for days or even weeks (or months).What we can answer — or come close to answering — is why Walker won. We put that question to a number of Democratic and Republican strategists in the final days of the recall campaign and, out of those conversations, developed a clear image of what went right for the incumbent — or, as accurately, wrong for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) — that led to tonight’s result.

It’s always important to remember that no win/loss in politics is ever (or, at least, very rarely) attributable to a single factor and so all of the reasons we list below worked together to ensure that Walker won and Barrett didn’t.

Red Flags All Over for Obama in Wisconsin– Democrats reserved nearly $19 million more in broadcast airtime this week across 24 House districts, throwing down yet another financial marker for the fall elections.The reservation marks the second stage of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s $46.3 million television spree scheduled for after Labor Day.The competition for ad time is steeper than ever this cycle, with presidential campaigns and well-funded outside groups plotting billion-dollar blitzes this fall. By reserving time in the hottest television markets early, the DCCC ensures the best rates and placement for its spots.

To be clear, the DCCC can cancel its reservation or shift money to different markets as races fluctuate. Nonetheless, the planned spending is far ahead of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has yet to announce any fall TV buys

DCCC Reserves $19M Worth of Airtime– Democrats reserved nearly $19 million more in broadcast airtime this week across 24 House districts, throwing down yet another financial marker for the fall elections.The reservation marks the second stage of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s $46.3 million television spree scheduled for after Labor Day.The competition for ad time is steeper than ever this cycle, with presidential campaigns and well-funded outside groups plotting billion-dollar blitzes this fall. By reserving time in the hottest television markets early, the DCCC ensures the best rates and placement for its spots.

To be clear, the DCCC can cancel its reservation or shift money to different markets as races fluctuate. Nonetheless, the planned spending is far ahead of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has yet to announce any fall TV buys

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